Evangelidis trip clouds tough issue

Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis is a decent guy, and even an honorable man.

But he is the latest example of how good and honorable people, without knowing it, often move to the tune of extremists' pied pipers.

In a lengthy interview Thursday, the sheriff tried to convince me that his recent trip to the U.S.-Mexico border was a fact-finding mission that confirmed for him that "criminal elements" were using our "failed immigration system" to "infiltrate" the country.

"What I observed was a failed immigration policy that has reached a crisis point," he said.

"People are coming in droves. They are being recruited and manipulated by the Mexican drug cartel, which has turned it (illegal immigration) into a $6 billon industry.

"My goal is to bring back this information so I can help solve the problem."

Perhaps Mr. Evangelidis truly believes in a "comprehensive, common-sense reform," which would "conceptually" include a path to citizenship for the illegal immigrants currently living in the country

But right now he is being a mouthpiece for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that has contributed greatly to the failed immigration status quo he decries. FAIR was founded by John Tanton, who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, wrote memos warning of a coming "Latin onslaught" and of "high Latino birth rates" that would lead the "present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile."

The Law Center points to FAIR's mid-1980s solicitation of funding from the Pioneer Fund, created "to promote the racial stock of the original colonists, finance studies of race and intelligence, and foster policies of racial betterment,'' as evidence of the group's extremism. FAIR was also behind the Arizona law that gave police power to stop and detain Latinos they believe might be illegal immigrants.

Numbers USA, which pressured Congress in 2007 to vote against President Bush's amnesty proposal for illegal immigrants; and the Center for Immigration Studies, which helped defeat congressional efforts (the Dream Act) to legalize children who were illegally brought to the country, are two other organizations backed by Mr. Tanton.

And it was FAIR that funded Mr. Evangelidis' trip to the border, a trip taken against the backdrop of a humanitarian crisis created by the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children coming across the border and turning themselves over to border patrol officials.

Finding proper accommodations for these children until their cases can be adjudicated by immigration officials is a pressing need, a challenge that Mr. Evangelidis' border trip has made more difficult and which no doubt counts as a victory for FAIR.

Indeed, Mr. Evangelidis' so-called findings that Massachusetts is now a border state (because the majority of the children processed are being let loose on the American public, with just 1 percent making an effort to keep in touch with immigration officials) has inflamed rather than helped the situation.

Such statements, whether intended or not, play into people's fears. It gives affirmation to residents like those heard Thursday on an NPR report saying the commonwealth would be courting disease and the potential criminality of children, if it were to accommodate any of the unaccompanied children.

"They were taught to steal in order to survive," one resident said.

These are not the words, or even the beliefs of Mr. Evangelidis, but he clearly has made himself a conduit for such nonsense.